Hope everyone has been having a lovely holiday so far; if you’re home and bored, you can check out an essay posted on ShinyGun, on getting my wisdom teeth yanked and leaving D.C. I’m excited to see it up there. But I had to be careful when showing it to my sister Christina. She’s having her wisdom teeth out on Monday, and she said the only thing keeping her going was that she’d heard I’d had an easy time. Oops.

Well, there you have it. It’s almost Christmas. And I am still lacking in a number of presents, have sent 0 of my 20 cards (although I did give one to Bob and John at the deli, for which I received a free lunch in return!) and am not even remotely packed to go home for a week tomorrow morning at the arse-crack of dawn. How did this happen? I am not sure.

I will send updates from Buffalo. Perhaps the family will be entertaining and update-worthy.

1) Falling over backwards whilst carrying a queen-sized mattress up the back stairs.
2) Breaking Eliina’s cookie jar.
3) Spilling coffee on Amanda’s important documents.
4) Watching Charlie carry an inordinately heavy green armchair up three flights of stairs, by balancing it on his head.
5) Hanging pages of the Reader over my extraordinarily large windows with Amanda. (My mother has suggested, every time I move, that I newspaper the windows until I get blinds. Every time, I’ve told her: “They gave me blinds.” This time, they didn’t. And so when she called and told me to put newspaper over the windows, I cracked up.

6) Going to Target with Eliina and spending hundreds of dollars on things like sponges and a bathmat.
7) Going to Ikea with Becca and spending hundreds more on things like mirrors and pot hooks.
8) Praising the lord for the patience, positive attitude and assistance of everyone, including my Chicago-dwelling friend Sarah.
9) Finding out that Amanda, as we carted many boxes up and down many steps, kept repeating an internal refrain of “Click clack moo, click clack moo, clickety clack moo…” which is from one of my favorite children’s books.
10) Falling asleep in a big bed in a warm, echoey room.